The semiconductor integrated circuit (IC) industry has experienced rapid growth. In the course of IC evolution, functional density (i.e., the number of interconnected devices per chip area) has generally increased while geometry size (i.e., the smallest component (or line) that can be created using a fabrication process) has decreased. This scaling down process generally provides benefits by increasing production efficiency and lowering associated costs. However, such scaling down has also been accompanied by increased complexity in design and manufacturing of devices incorporating these ICs. Parallel advances in manufacturing have allowed increasingly complex designs to be fabricated with precision and reliability.
As merely one example, advances in lithography have enabled the formation of increasingly complex circuits. In general, lithography is the formation of a pattern on a target. In one type of lithography, referred to as photolithography, radiation such as ultraviolet light passes through or reflects off a mask before striking a photoresist coating on the target. The photoresist includes one or more components that undergo a chemical transition when exposed to radiation. A resultant change in property allows either the exposed or the unexposed portions of the photoresist to be selectively removed. In this way, photolithography transfers a pattern from the mask onto the photoresist, which is then selectively removed to reveal the pattern. The target then undergoes processing steps that take advantage of the shape of the remaining photoresist to create features on the target.